


the shepherd

by kajitsukai



Category: Exalted
Genre: CW: Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:11:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7873888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kajitsukai/pseuds/kajitsukai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saturn is no stranger to the northern lands. Neither is Mars. Sarnai has been familiar with death and war for most of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the shepherd

She is eight or nine when she first sees death firsthand. Saturn was no stranger to these mountain villages, not to their neighbors, and not to this one, but this was the first time Sarnai had seen it this time. The boy who’d died had been sick for weeks, and she had been bringing him flowers, only to find a stillness that set a weight down on the entire room. He did not respond to her voice, or her touch, or the crash and panicked sobbing of his mother when she came into the room.

The cries echoed long into the night, and Grandmother had found Sarnai, still uncomprehending, watching them take the shrouded body up the mountain to offer up to the sky. All she had understood was that boy had been replaced with something empty and scary, and she’d already been near tears before Grandmother had explained to her she’d never, ever see that boy again.

 _Don’t cry_ , Grandmother had told her then. _No one is ever gone forever, so long as we remember them, and their stories._

Sarnai had asked what happened when someone had no stories to remember them by, and Grandmother had chuckled, dry and tired and not quite reaching her eyes. 

_Everyone has a story. It’s just a matter of finding it._

\--

She is 10 when a Linowan raiding party makes it halfway up the brambled, thorny path to their village. The hunters had scrambled to fight, along with anyone else who could carry a weapon, and they had gone for hours, and come back missing some, come back bleeding, come back licking their wounds but victorious. 

Sarnai had asked the hunters, ever-curious, about why they’d gone out, and they’d told her it was worth it, to protect what they loved. She’d demanded they teach her, and the hunters had laughed until grandmother dragged her away. It had made her angry, and she’d railed against the fact no one would teach her to fight--wasn’t she already the fastest in the whole village, even without using her wings? But the hunters and grandmother did not relent.

She had another plan. Farther up the mountain lived a reclusive hermit, who the herdmother sent supplies to once a week. When Sarnai volunteered to do it, no one thought anything of it--the winged girl carrying the supplies made sense, after so many wounded. And when she took them, she eyed the swords on his wall, begged him to teach her when he noticed.

He’d laughed, but when she’d snapped and thrown a boot at him, he’d caught it and focused his single, blood-red eye on her.

_Why’s it so important, little bird? What’ve you got to die for, at your age?_

She hadn’t understood the question, but answered it all the same. _I don’t wanna let anyone hurt the people I care about._

_And you’re willing to die for that?_

She had nodded, although with some confusion and hesitation, and he’d laughed and ruffled her hair. _Don’t look confused. To carry a weapon is to be ready to die every time you draw it. But let’s start with something simpler._

She went up to the hermit’s hut every week, after that. 

\--

When she was 14, she killed a woman. It was at the trader’s market, at the bottom of the mountain--the town there had a name, although she could never remember it, and several of the younger girls and boys had finally been allowed to come along. They were given specific instructions not to wander, _especially_ Sarnai, outfitted in a heavy cloak that only vaguely hid her wings. Naturally, not a single one of them listened, scattering into the caravan as wildly as puppies. They were children, and all of them knew, they were invincible from harm.

The illusion shattered when a trader caught her and a couple other children in the dark, called them pretty little flowers, ripped the cloak off Sarnai to reveal her wings. Slaves fetched good money and safety from the Linowan, and the woman wagered such a pretty little bird would fetch a fine price. The others...well, there’s always a place for someone with bright blue eyes and a soft mouth.

Sarnai had been given a knife for her birthday, that year. A hunter’s knife, of bone and leather wrapped around the handle, sharp enough to shear through meat and separate it from hide and sinew. Sharp enough to give peace to a dying elk, or cut a pregnant fox free of the traps. Sharp enough to bury itself in an older woman’s throat as she tried to take away the younger child.

Sarnai remembers it clearly every day for the rest of her life, the spray and scent of blood, and the feeling of life draining out of that woman’s body. She cannot describe it if she tries; it isn’t simply the blood, or breath, or the way her movement stops after what seems like an age, body emptied of its’ contents, to be silent. No, in that moment, she feels something stop and slip through her bloodied hands and leave, and they are fortunate Grandmother finds them before anyone else does. 

She had seen sheep slaughtered before. She’d hunted, even made a kill before. But the scent of human blood, the weight of it, gave her nightmares for weeks. Grandmother forbade her from going to the market again, and Sarnai didn’t argue. But finally, after she forgoed sleep and the circles under her eyes were darker than her hair (she swore she could still feel blood matted in the braid), she asked the old hermit what she should do.

He had looked at her, cold and calm as the mountain slopes, and told her, as he took the kettle off the fire to pour, _There is nothing you can do, little bird, to change what it is you’ve done. If you have found a cause worth dying for, then it must also be one worth killing for._

She had been silent, staring into her teacup, for what seemed like hours before he’d spoken again, and in her memory she recalls the strange gentleness to what he’d said.

_Do not cry, little bird...all of us are born bloodied, and we’ll die bloodied. Remember that what you fight for is a joy without a name, instead of weeping for those who’d have destroyed it._

She had nodded, and drank her tea, and the nightmares slowly faded. And when the raiders came that next spring, as they always did, she struck from the mountain cliffs, fierce and so violently the hunters nicknamed her little hawk. 

\--

At 19, she had believed that life was simple. It began, and ended, on a circular note--you hunted and took what you needed, you tended the sheep, in the spring and before winter set in you fought those who would seek to own people as they owned horses and goats. The same story repeats, every year, and she had grown restless. _Bored_. The scar against her lips was a faded reminder that even she wasn’t invincible. The old hermit had left that winter, saying he was needed elsewhere, but if she worked hard, they’d see each other again one day. The sword that was enshrined in the village center was as quiet as it had ever been.

Nothing changed. Nothing changed, and Sarnai stood quiet and alone as the strangest thing in the hills. The best fighter was officially some brute from another clan, a tall and angry drunkard who’s hair was already falling out at 35, who’s words were slurred from his jaw broken one too many times, who fought so hard in the raids so many times that even the Linowan would break if they saw him come down the mountain paths. Officially, everyone had known it was so, but unofficially, the young shephards and weavers and the tiny girl who was the blacksmith’s apprentice knew better. They knew that Grandmother’s apprentice, the winged girl, was the strongest in the mountains, that she came shrieking down from the clouds onto raiders like a bolt from the sky, and vanished just as fast. The wooden mask she wore hid nothing; there was no one else like her in the mountains. Not with wings. Not with her skin and hair so starkly dark against a world of pale and brown and blonde and red. 

Sarnai had heard all these things. Heard them rumored behind the storage houses. Heard the whispers in the hot springs they used as a bath. Heard them when she brought the herds back from their grazing. She had heard them her whole life, and while Grandmother has taught her to mind the stories people tell, Sarnai was tired of it, tired and restless and yearning. The sky and wind seemed to call to her of a freedom she’d never known.

And she had chased it, recklessly, fearlessly. She was the best at what she did. There had been no reason to fear, for she was always ready to fight, or so she thought.

Three days before she turned 20, the world shattered.

She could not remember the fight no matter how hard she tried ( _a lie; she remembered it with perfect clarity, but could not bear the weight of doing so_ ), but she could not forget the scent of burning flesh, the wails of the mourning, the echoing sound in her ears that she would later realize was her own voice. Her hair was burnt so badly that grandmother had sheared it short with a knife, and Sarnai had burned the ragged braid remaining in the pyre they’d made in vigil. They could not possibly burn all the bodies.

She remembered words long ago, echoing in her ears.

 _“No one is gone so long as we remember them.”_ The blood under her fingernails called this a lie, and the burns across her back, where her wings had been so charred she should never have flown again, itched where they were healing, where her feathers were regrowing. 

_“All of us are born bloodied, and we’ll die bloodied.”_ It seemed closer to the truth, but the whispering wind that had followed her since she pulled this strange golden sword from it’s resting place told her that it was an incomplete truth. She listened, lost, choking in Saturn’s shroud as it had descended upon her. She could hear what they called her, as they looked at her, peering at her forehead, where light had drowned out even the rain in that moment. 

Narangerel, they called her. A goddess. A blessing. A _hero_ , sent by Sol when all other gods had forsaken them. Nothing had ever felt less like the truth, but the wind laughed, and a raspy voice she had begun to realize came from the blade in her hands rang around in her battered head.

_“You don’t get to decide that, girl. You saved them.”_

“I _doomed_ them,” she murmured, 

_“So what? That’s already over. What are you going to do now? They’re waiting for you.”_

She had looked up, across the ruined remains, where her old shepherd's cane had been planted over the body of that young blacksmith’s apprentice. That girl had been stronger than she looked, but a small child still could withstand the full force of a dragon’s sword. She’d only served to get Sarnai most of the way out of the blade.

She looks over the smoking rubble, to Altan, an eagle she’d raised, fallen from the nest, and realized she could feel the pulse of his essence even from across the village.

She looked at grandmother, who looked small and cold and _old_ , for the first time, and Sarnai felt as though she could see Saturn’s hands, undiscerning and waiting, held open for them all.

“...We have to go.” It isn’t loud enough for anyone to hear, at first, and then she found her voice, as she stood, legs shaking under her. It hurt, more than anything else, fire racing down her back, exhaustion dragging down her legs, but that meant she was still alive to feel it. “We have to go! Get everything we can...and send any bird who can fly over to the other villages. We can’t stay here.”

They had paused, looking at her with confusion and fear, but no one had argued. No one had demanded explanation for her. They turned their faces to her, like flowers to the sun, and fear had dropped out the bottom of Sarnai’s stomach, leaving her in freefall while standing on solid ground.

There was nothing else she could do. Winter was starting. They had to go south, somewhere they wouldn’t freeze to death. South, south, so far they couldn’t be found by the Hunt. 

There was no way to save them all. But if she gave up saving the ones she still could, she’d never deserve to show her head in sunlight ever again.

The truth caught in her throat, and the wind whipped away the last tears she had to shed.


End file.
